Stone Skipping Black Holes in Ultralight Dark Matter Solitons
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866918442172416000 |
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| author | Zhang, Alan Wang, Yourong Zagorac, J. Luna Easther, Richard |
| author_facet | Zhang, Alan Wang, Yourong Zagorac, J. Luna Easther, Richard |
| contents | The orbit of a black hole moving within an ultralight dark matter (ULDM) soliton is naively expected to decay due to dynamical friction. However, single black holes can undergo ``stone skipping'', with their orbital radius varying quasi-periodically. We show that stone skipping is induced by the dipole excitation of the soliton. We model it as resonance in a forced, damped harmonic oscillator, demonstrating that the coherent response of the soliton can significantly modify the dynamics of objects orbiting within it. This suggests that a dipole perturbation of a soliton can modify inspiral timescales if the black holes masses are significantly less than the soliton mass, with implications for supermassive black hole dynamics, the final parsec problem and gravitational wave observations in a ULDM cosmology. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_11512 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Stone Skipping Black Holes in Ultralight Dark Matter Solitons Zhang, Alan Wang, Yourong Zagorac, J. Luna Easther, Richard Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies The orbit of a black hole moving within an ultralight dark matter (ULDM) soliton is naively expected to decay due to dynamical friction. However, single black holes can undergo ``stone skipping'', with their orbital radius varying quasi-periodically. We show that stone skipping is induced by the dipole excitation of the soliton. We model it as resonance in a forced, damped harmonic oscillator, demonstrating that the coherent response of the soliton can significantly modify the dynamics of objects orbiting within it. This suggests that a dipole perturbation of a soliton can modify inspiral timescales if the black holes masses are significantly less than the soliton mass, with implications for supermassive black hole dynamics, the final parsec problem and gravitational wave observations in a ULDM cosmology. |
| title | Stone Skipping Black Holes in Ultralight Dark Matter Solitons |
| topic | Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11512 |